danglerb

Ask for, and I suspect pay for a full independent inspection, and be prepared to live with the results. I would also do a carfax to see if anything else turns up.

Be sure to do everything through the structure ebay provides, and follow up, thats where most people lose their chance at recovery.

I would also stop posting about it publicly until its settled.

y33trekker

Carfax/Autocheck prior to bidding turned up nothing.

Bill Ball

I bought my 89 on eBay and had a good experience. The seller sent me all kinds of information and answered all my annoying questions during the auction. Still, after I won the bidding, I did not send him a dime until I saw the car. I simply arranged to travel to his location ASAP. I figured if the car was trash I would just get back on the next plane and go home. I accepted that the travel expenses were my cost for doing a long distance transaction, not his, even if the car was misrepresented in my opinion. Fortunately, it was not, and we all lived happily ever after. The moral of the story is do not give a dime to the seller until you are completely certain you are buying the car. And eBay is as good a place as any other to buy a car as long as you observe the same precautions as you would dealing with a local seller.

chaadster

Here's another one to live by: Don't buy from someone (on Ebay) who can't spell and has poor grammar.

Andre Hedrick

I bought my first '81 from ebay and the seller was fantastic. Even after I was run off the road and should have die in the car, he and I still emailed. It is all in who you are dealing with on ebay.

I do have access to the general counsel for ebay, he does not address these issues. Since it is over $500, and interstate commerce, call the FBI because it is a federal case now.

Cheers,

danglerb

Bill when you flew out, did you get One Way or Round Trip tickets?

I would bring a camera too, if I see trouble, take a "good" picture of it, use something to hold the camera steady etc. Later on problems may be harder to document. You should also try and get an independent inspection NOW while you can, after the car sells to the next bidder, suppose the seller goes after you in court for the difference. Time to document and protect yourself.

The "basic" problem I see in this case is that the sellers claims are subjective, 9.8/10 doesn't in fact mean a thing, and the rest is the sellers opinion. The seller also isn't required to have knowledge of the vehicles real condition, it is the obligation of the buyer.

JHowell37

I bought my '85 off e-bay and it was a POS. But then again I only paid $3500 for it and what can you expect from a $3500 32 valve 928?

greg928GTS

I bought my SL off ebay. The buyer was just 3 hours drive from me. I put the high bid in on a Sunday morning and he met with me that afternoon. The car was "as described", but later I learned that the front struts were no good ($3000). My fault for not having a PPI done. Alls good though. Fun drive home! My friend and I trading the S8 and the SL along the way.

Mike Frye

I bought mine on eBay as well (can you tell from my avatar), and if I may paraphrase Jim Bailey- 'winning' an eBay auction is basically getting a right to first refusal. And as Bill said, I wouldn't give up a dime without a PPI or personal inspection. If it doesn't significantly match the description (and phone/e-mail responses) then you can just walk away and everyone is happy. You should be able to recover your deposit, if not by working through eBay, then through legal means, since you didn't buy the car.
Your transportation costs are just that, the cost of finding the car you want.

Sab

I bought my GT sight unseen and wired the money before I flew up to pick it. It was just as described by the seller.

y33trekker

I hate you.

bronto

So far, so good with mine too. I felt comfortable with the seller even though the car was half way across the country. I had someone else do a lookover for me and drive it to at least make sure it wasn't an outright fraud attempt. I also knew I could track him down somewhat locally. Getting the car away from the mechanic after I got it home was a lot more money than I expected, but it more due to extensive deferred maintenance than anything seriously wrong. Hoses, belts, fluids, etc. But after hearing all the horror stories I'd likely not do it the same way again. And it seems your expectations were a lot higher than mine were too. I would not expect (or even seek) perfection in a car off of eBay. Use Hemmings (or this forum) for that. I would also never expect a seller to be able to objectively rate their own car as a "10".

JPTL

I think it being described as a "VACTION" car would have made me nervous.

y33trekker

I'll have to learn to stop using my eyes so much to see. Normally, bad grammar and spelling are big pet peeves of mine, but that car just looked so darn good in the photos.

danglerb

Ebay isn't what it used to be. Recently in the course of shopping for and buying a few $500 or less items I found several scams, which led me to find extensive problems with a LOT of sellers.

Ebook scam, feedback is what makes ebay work, so scammers buy and sell ebooks from each other for 1 or 2 cents with no shipping charges. It all runs off automated scripts that send out the ebook as a email attachment, and as soon as the buyer pays and gives the seller positive feedback, the seller gives the buyer positive feedback. One dollar can get you 100 100% positive feedback in a couple hours. Do a search for ebook, sort by lowest price first and look at some of the auctions. Really dig by listing all items by that seller, and completed auctions, then go one more layer and look at who all the buyers and sellers are they have left feedback for. Lots of car sellers in there.

How this gets hidden, buy 50 feedback via ebooks, then buy 20 cheap items and sell 20 cheap items, now buy a handfull of more expensive, but not too expensive items, and you are set with around 100 transactions and 100% positive feedback with all sorts of glowing comments. Now do all of your scam auctions at once. Few even savvy ebay buyers check feedback more page or so, now I look at random over a LONG period.

Alternate method, sell a mix of items, ebooks or just cheap commodity type items, but sell about 10x as many of them as your scam items and word the scam items so its hard to show outright fraud, like "untested" but I know they work fine, and make it clear in your auction negative feedback is left on anybody who doesn't attempt to resolve the problem before leaving negative feedback, so even people who are totally burned and you tell to go suck eggs will be unlikely to leave negatives. My booted off trophy for last week is a scammer that did just that keeping his percent around 97%. When I turned him into ebay for feedback farming they went in and cancled the feedback from all the ebook stuff and he is now, not a registered user NARU.

Main scam is just to carefully word your ad so you promise nothing, and include many non refundable charges, then sell any junk you want.